Boost your clickthrough rates with brilliant subject lines

When crafting a marketing email, you likely put most of your energy into creating compelling copy. However, you should save a little of that creative spark for the subject line. After all, if you can't persuade someone to open your email, they'll never read that compelling copy.

Making the most of your subject line

Subject lines need to be short and snappy, and that means every word counts. And remember, people reading your email on mobile devices will only see the first few words of your subject line, so get keywords in early if you can.

Offer an incentive

You need to give your readers an idea of what your marketing email might contain and, if possible, an incentive for opening it. Mentioning special offers, discounts, new stock or priority booking in your subject lines is a great way to show people that reading your email will be worth their while.

Trial and error

Unfortunately, there’s no such thing as the perfect subject line. But even if one did exist, we’d all be sick of reading it by now. The best way to work out what performs most successfully for you is to trial a variety of keywords and sentiments and keep hold of all your email analytics to see which perform best.

Keep it fresh

While keywords like 'free delivery' or 'sale' often perform well, they can become devalued and tiresome if you use them all the time. Be sure to mix up your subject-line content and stop your readers from becoming too familiar with your techniques.

Personalise when you can

A personalised subject line is far more likely to grab your customer's attention than a standard callout. However, getting it wrong can be infuriating. When a user signs up for your email service, ask them to fill in a few basic details such as their name, gender and location.  Then as part of your regular to do's review you database at least 6 monthly to make sure all the details are in the right location.  Localised offers can perform very well, as can emails that react to personal shopping history.

Get some help with your email marketing campaign and perfect your subject-line skills with help from Bloomtools.